Television news is the main source of information on the Israel-Palestine conflict for about 80% of the population. Yet the quality of what they see and hear is so confused and partial that it is impossible to have a sensible public debate about the reasons for the conflict or how it might be resolved.

This is the conclusion of exhaustive research by the Glasgow University Media Group, which brought journalists, academics and ordinary viewers together to study the influence of news on public understanding. More than 800 people were interviewed and researchers examined around 200 news programmes. Senior journalists told researchers that they were instructed not to give explanations - the focus was to be on live action. As Paul Adams, the BBC defence correspondent, put it: "It's covered as if it's a very large blood feud and, unless there's a large amount of blood, it's not covered." George Alagiah stressed a belief in the BBC that the attention span of viewers is about 20 seconds.

The result of this approach is that there is almost nothing on the news about the history or origins of the conflict and viewers are extraordinarily confused. Many believed that the Palestinians were occupying the occupied territories or that it was basically a border dispute between two countries who were trying to grab a piece of land which separated them. The great bulk of those we interviewed had no idea where the Palestinian refugees had come from - some suggested Afghanistan, Iraq or Kosovo.

Without history or context, news reports tend to focus on day to day events and, in reporting these, there is a strong emphasis on Israeli perspectives. The research found that Israelis were interviewed or reported more than twice as much as Palestinians. There were also a large number of statements from US politicians who tend to support Israel. They were interviewed twice as much as politicians from Britain.

The language of the "war on terror" is frequently featured and journalists sometimes endorse it in their own speech, as in this example: "That attack [by a Palestinian] only reinforced Israeli determination to drive further into the towns and camps where Palestinians live - ripping up roads around Bethlehem as part of the ongoing fight against terror". (ITV, early evening news in March 2002). This report also illustrates a familiar theme in news coverage whereby the Palestinians are seen to initiate trouble and the Israelis are then presented as "responding".

There are very distinct and different perspectives on this conflict which should be represented on the news. The Israeli authorities and much of the Israeli population see the issue in terms of their security and the survival of the state in the face of threats from terrorists and hostile neighbours. They present their own actions as a retaliation to attacks. The Palestinians see themselves as resisting a brutal military occupation by people who have taken their land, water and homes and who are denying them the possibility of their own state.

The analysis of news content suggests that the first of these perspectives tends to dominate news reporting. Between October and December 2001, for example, on BBC1 and ITV news, Israelis were said to be responding to what had been done to them about six times as often as the Palestinians. This pattern of reporting clearly influenced how some viewers understood the conflict. As one young woman put it: "You always think of the Palestinians as being really aggressive because of the stories you hear on the news ... I always think the Israelis are fighting back."

There were also differences in the language used for the casualties of both sides. Words such as "mass murder", "atrocity", and "brutal murder", were used to describe the deaths of Israelis, but not Palestinians. The emphasis on the deaths of Israelis was very marked in the coverage. In March 2002, when the BBC noted that the Palestinians had suffered the highest number of casualties in any single week since the beginning of the intifada, there was actually more coverage on the news of Israeli deaths. This again apparently had a strong influence on the understanding of viewers and only a minority questioned knew that Palestinians had substantially higher casualties.

The gaps in public knowledge closely parallel those in the news. The Palestinian perspective, that they have lost their land and are living under occupation, was effectively absent. It is perhaps not surprising that some viewers believed that they were simply being aggressive and trying to take land from the Israelis. Claims by Andrew Neil in a recent criticism of our work that people "naturally" sympathise with the Palestinians because they use stones against tanks is not borne out by the research. One of the difficulties in giving historical background is simply that the area is contested and controversial. Journalists spoke to us of the pressures they were under and of the hate mail they received, particularly if their reports were deemed to be critical of Israel. Lindsey Hilsum commented: "With a conflict like this nearly every single fact is disputed ... I have to say what both sides think, and sometimes I think that stops us from giving the background."

TV journalists are caught in a maelstrom of competing accounts, but they cannot turn away from their duty to inform and explain. There are serious issues raised by a news service which leaves so many people confused and ill-informed.